Build Trust Through Listening and Intentional Leadership

Intro: Welcome to Honestly We’re Learning, a podcast from ClearEdge, the marketing agency that also helps marketers grow their careers.

Join Leslie Vickrey and Lesly Cardec as we explore the turning points that shape a person’s professional story, the highs, the stumbles, and everything in between. We’ll bring you candid conversations with leaders and rising talent, plus our own take on what’s changing in marketing and recruiting today. Because behind every success story is a few lessons learned the hard way. And honestly, we’re all still learning.

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Lesly Cardec: All right, we’re here, we’re ready to go. How are you?

Leslie Vickrey: Time for our next podcast. Doing well, doing well. I’m coming off of Greyson’s 10th birthday weekend celebration, which was a ton of fun and Executive Forum. So let’s talk about that for a minute because it’s always a whirlwind even when you’re there the whole week and this is Staffing Industry Analyst Executive Forum for those who don’t know and for us, it’s one of our largest events of the year.

Mainly because one, SIA is a great partner. Two, we have a lot of clients and prospects and partners who are there. So it gives us that kind of face time with them. But three, this year we were launching our second book from The Lady Leader’s Book Club, Rising with Courage. So we had a lot to celebrate. Unfortunately, my heart sunk a little when I looked at the dates because it actually fell on my son’s 10th birthday.

So I had to really take some time to think about that. Actually, it was not too long because I knew the right thing to do. I just felt bad about it. You know, not being there and not seeing everyone. But I knew I needed to be at home with Greyson. But it reminded me, Joyce Russell, who’s the president of the US, the US Foundation. She had shared with me this 10-10-10 before, which is when you’re making decisions, what will happen in the next 10 minutes of making that decision, the next 10 months and the 10 years. And she shares this incredible story about her son and some decisions that she had to make. In fact, every time I heard it nearly brings me to tears. And I use it quite a bit though, to think about, you know, in the next 10 minutes, what would his reaction be if he knew I wouldn’t be there on his birthday.

10 months and 10 years and I couldn’t even get past the 10 minutes of me telling him. It was like, yeah, no, I’m not, can’t envision that. This is not happening. I’ll be going for a day and coming home. So flew in for basically a day to see people and made it back home in time.

Lesly Cardec: It’s so hard. That’s happened to me before, but it actually happened not too long ago because I was on a panel and it was on the day of… So it was one of those things.

Leslie Vickrey: Yes, I remember remember that. Your daughter’s birthday?

Lesly Cardec: Yeah. I just, the guilt, the guilt was like terrible, but I had a conversation and made it extra special when I got home and it was fine. But I hear you. It’s one of those things where it’s like…How can you be at both and be fully present when something’s tugging you one way or the other? It’s really hard. The mom guilt is real.

Leslie Vickrey: It is. And then you worry, I mean, at least the things that go through my head, you know, what are people going to say or think, or how is this going to go over? Be there to represent our team and the company and all of these things. But at the end of the day, my place was meant to be here and it was the right decision. I mean, double digits, I couldn’t have missed the double digits scenario.

Speaking of being present, another thing you and I have talked about recently, because we’ve all had spring breaks and different breaks, winter breaks and all of the things happening and vacations and just being present. So now you make that decision, you’re on vacation, you’re with your family and you’re there and you need to disconnect. Share more.

Lesly Cardec: I feel like the common thread of asking me for advice throughout the podcast has been, don’t look at me as an, no, I’m just kidding. I’m getting better at it. I personally struggle with it a bit because I never want to come back and get so overwhelmed. Like I’ve always been the person to kind of just check on things and I may not respond, but I’ll just, I’ll just peek. And obviously if something’s urgent, I would…hopefully have a nice person to back me up at work. But I was better this time. It’s definitely a work in progress. I know you feel the same way where it’s like you’re holding yourself back because honestly, the company was here when we got back, right? The company was here when you got back, it’s holding yourself back from jumping in and rescuing. You’ve talked about this recently, I think on a social media post is like, how do you not jump in and rescue? How do you hold yourself back and let other people step in and help you in your place? And that’s just as important for them as it is for you. So I think by the next time, maybe you and I can commit to maybe not looking or turning off notifications. And you and I talked about taking it off our phone. I don’t know if I’ll do that yet. That’s pretty aggressive. But at one point, maybe we should take it off of our phone so we’re not tempted to hit it.

Leslie Vickrey: Not bring the laptop, not feel, you know, it’s like a blanket almost. It’s there and available. to your point, I mean, listen, for anyone listening, I think everyone talks about this and struggles with it, but you, you know, you take different steps and depending on your role and the situation, but at the end of the day, you set your team up to be successful when you’re gone and you trust them to handle things when you’re gone. And it’s a great leadership trait to send that message to them that you’re also disconnecting and that you trust them to do the work. It gives them an opportunity to rise up. All of that sounds great. It’s in practice. So, you know, we have a trip coming up this summer and I am committing to taking it to a step further than I have in the past because quite frankly, if I’m checking email, something could make me anxious and then not present for an entire day with my family. And that’s not fair to them or to me or the other people on the trip. So I am going to commit to turning off notifications and removing, I’m going to say it out loud, removing my email and Slack from my phone.

Lesly Cardec: Well, it’s out there. Can’t take it back! It’s important though. One email can shift your entire mood, something comes through that was unexpected or whatever it may be, it can definitely shift. So, good. I’m going to hold you to it.

Leslie Vickrey: Today we’re excited to welcome Leslie Snavely, CEO of CHG Healthcare, the nation’s leading physician and advanced practice workforce experts. Before we jump into her impressive background, a quick housekeeping note for our listeners. We are officially at maximum Leslie capacity today. That’s right, three Leslie’s on one podcast. We’re gonna do our best to keep this from getting confusing and the key word there is try.

Leslie, I’ve loved getting to know you not only as a leader, but as someone who shares so many things that matter most to me. One, from growing up with that grounding influence of smaller town life, to building a career while raising kids who love to, you know, all the mountain things, ski, bike, be outside, soaking up all the adventure that they can. And it’s all to watch your journey. You are one of those leaders who shows up fully, not just for your company, but for people. And speaking from personal experience, even at conferences, in the middle of packed agendas and constant motion, you always seem to make time for others and including me. So that could be, I think the first time we met was a sit down conversation. And then the second one was simply just walking to sessions together. But what I can say is you always carve out that time and it says a lot about who you are. And of course, your leadership story is an incredible one. You’ve just completed your first full year as CEO in a defining chapter by any measure. Leslie, under your leadership, CHG has continued to modernize, sharpen its enterprise strategy and evolve with the intention while staying deeply committed to a people first culture. That balance kind of innovation without losing the human core is something we’re really excited to unpack a little bit more with you today.

And honestly, the results speak for themselves. CHG earned a world-class net promoter score and was named one of Fortune’s best companies to work for for the 12th time, according to the notes I have. And you’ve also been recognized, you personally, Leslie, as one of Utah Business Magazine CEOs of the Year. Congratulations. But what always has stood out to me, Leslie, that something that we touched on actually in our first conversation, and that’s really your love of learning, and your resilience and your belief that leadership is about helping others grow into their potential. And you’ve built a career by staying curious. I love that about you and not settling for no. And I know that story about career you have with CHG when maybe you told no and keeping going for yes and continuing to challenge yourself along the way. So Leslie, I could keep going.

Leslie Snavely: Gosh, I’m so embarrassed after you say all those things.

Leslie Vickrey: We’re thrilled to have you and welcome back to the conversation.

Leslie Snavely: Well, thank you. Thank you both for having me. And like you said, this is maybe the first time there are three Leslie’s on one podcast in history. So we’re very excited about this.

Lesly Cardec: In the history of all podcasting, this is the first. I love it. So I wanted to start because after I was digging into your background, I realized you’re also a marketer by background. I couldn’t help but notice that you’ve rose through the ranks from finance and then marketing and sales, and now the CEO role, which quite frankly, all of that makes my eyes light up so big. But it’s really not the most common path. So selfishly as a marketer, I’m just curious, how did your time as a marketer shape the way you lead today?

Leslie Snavely: That’s a great question. So first of all, I am, as you mentioned in my introduction, one of the things about me is I love to learn new things. And this is something that has come back from day one, my parents, how we were raised. I was raised with educators. And so part of why I’ve had that journey, Lesly, is because I have this tremendous desire to be inquisitive about whatever the topic is at hand.

So at the beginning, my very early finance, then marketing, then sales, then back to marketing. Part of that journey is this desire to know how business works and runs. And so as I went through all of the things, ultimately spending the lion’s share of my career in marketing, it was always constantly focused on what can I learn that could help me be better at business, right, or as a business leader.

So that’s kind of the root of what I did. But one of the things that carried very, from the beginning of my marketing career all the way until literally this week is this desire to understand my customer. So when I was working for Procter & Gamble, which was my very first marketing job, the company really worked under this imperative that said the consumer is boss. And for consumer packaged goods, that was their customer, the ultimate end user of their product.

And so from a very early training ground in marketing, I learned that no matter what you thought was right as the marketer or as a salesperson or as the general manager, as the future business leader, really truly understanding and what insights you can learn about your customer can shape how you do your work and should shape how you do your work to give you the right business strategy, competitive advantage, you fill in the blank. So…

That insight and the learning curve early on of truly learn, just learn about the journey of your customer, not necessarily what products they want or what services they need, because they may not know what products they want or what services they need, but really truly about their journey and how you can then solve uniquely some of the problems they may have. And that’s the way to build sustainable businesses long-term. So that marketing that like nugget from early on really shapes how I lead today.

Lesly Cardec: I love that, the customer at the center can apply to so many facets of business today. And if you keep that at the center, then really it’ll kind of drive all of your strategy and your, your go forward movement. So I love that so much. It also gives a lot of I don’t want to say hope is not the right word, but it’s like anything’s possible, right? You kind of have gone through all these different paths and and you became CEO and that’s not a, you know, we’re seeing a little bit more of that today, but it’s still not the norm. I don’t know if you all have seen differently, but it’s still very much not the norm.

Leslie Snavely: My advice, by the way, to people who are marketers who want to do this is one of the things I’ve seen a lot over my career is that sometimes my marketing colleagues have not been able to really fundamentally connect the work they do to the business result. And so the thing, and this is if you go back in my career, starting in finance, everything had to be connected to the business result. That is how you’re wired. And so being able to speak the language of the CFO, the language of an investor, to talk about how the decisions you make as a marketer or what you learn and what you think you should design, build, et cetera, linked to the results of a business is the key skill, I think, that can help marketers bridge over to be a more general management function if that’s what you desire.

Lesly Cardec: I think the solution is we all need to put finance classes inside marketing, marketing degrees.

Leslie Snavely: Exactly, exactly.

Leslie Vickrey: That’s inside everything really, not just understanding the return, but understanding the business and your answer too, Leslie, supports what you always talk about, which is being really curious and digging deeper. We’ll sometimes start a conversation and people will assume we’re going to talk marketing because we’re a marketing agency. And I’ll have to preface it by saying, I really want to understand your business first and getting really, really curious about that.

I would say, Leslie, with that, in thinking of your kind of internal customers, quote unquote, in your team. And I know as well when thinking about getting curious about different things, this is something I’m really excited to hear your answer about and hear you dig a little deeper on because as any company, ours included, starts to scale culture and that deep connection is so important. You’ve been all over, the past couple of months on social, I love following you and the journey, but you going on a road show and literally deeply connecting with your teams and really being there and they see you in person and you have fun with them and you’re out enjoying time together. And I recently read through your Utah Business Magazine CEO of the Year article, which had a quote that said that “of everything you’ve worked on, the thing you’re most proud of isn’t a metric or milestone, it’s the strong values based culture you’ve built at CHG.” So I want to start there because that can be tricky to maintain, especially as companies are selling or they’re private equity backed or when you think of customers, like whoever that customer may be, things can go awry on that front, but it’s something you have really focused and honed in a lot on and as part of why you’re so successful. what does that take to protect and scale a values driven culture especially at times of change, growth, and transformation?

Leslie Snavely: It’s a great question. And probably it’s the thing I literally think about by the day of the week. Because now to your point, we’re much bigger. I started 16 years ago. I was one of about a thousand people and now we have over 4,000 people, right? So you think about how you build a culture, train, sustain, nurture at 1,000 and 4,000 can be very, very different just given the scale. So one of the things I would tell you, it’s almost counterintuitive is to always be listening. And that can be overwhelming, right, depending on the scale of your company. But what I try to do every year, every quarter is sit down with various groups, whether it’s my road show, which I just did in person about six weeks ago in our company, or in talking to folks about what’s going well, what’s not going well. If you could just keep one thing, what would it be? If you could change one thing, what would it be? What feedback do you have for me? So sitting down live and in person and having that discussion, but then also doing it programmatically throughout the year. And so that listening as a headline, the ability to truly be present when you’re with someone, then also to take your time to listen. So I do, as an example, I do a road show every year, early in the year in January.

And I do listening groups throughout the year for our employees. Come and chat with Leslie, right? And it’s literally a Zoom session where people can just sign up and ask me the questions they wanna ask me. I do that with leaders eight times a year, with employees 10 times a year. Go on the road one time a year, walk the halls every single week, call people, talk to them, ask what’s going right and what’s going wrong. But it’s doing all the things with this intention to truly listen.

By the way, listening doesn’t mean you agree. Listening doesn’t mean you’re gonna change your approach, but listening means literally listening with an inquisitive mindset. And I think at the core of building and sustaining a culture is doing that. And then finding the things you are gonna action and then saying, hey, I heard you, here’s our plan. That return loop communication is just so important to keep the culture really, what I’ll call, true, right? Because you can say you want a culture to be something, but if you don’t go out, listen to what it is, do the things it takes to change if needed, or just to reinforce where you are, it doesn’t sustain, right? So, and candidly, these are hard things. I probably dedicate, I would say 20% of my time to some form of listening or communicating. And that is like a…a lot of time, you think about how much time you have as a CEO, 20% of my time to listening or communicating, and that’s with small groups, big groups, leaders, individual contributors, salespeople, business partner, administrative coordinating, technologists, and salespeople, right? And all over the company, because everyone really has something valuable to add to our culture. And I think that type of fling, that type of listening is what makes it sustain.

Leslie Vickrey: One thing I would say to that is the internal communication expert in me, that’s where I got my start in marketing, my heart is singing so happy for this to hear you say this right now, because we always say, even when you feel like you’re communicating, you need to communicate more. And the thing that it shows is one, a lot of companies don’t do that. So that is a differentiator for you. So I hope others listening take it truly to heart when you think of the fact that you care, you show you care, that you’re listening and then you’re also kind of communicating that out and making change based on, again, not everything, but the things that are core and important, that matters. When you think of going and scaling from 1,000 to 4,000, the retention you need, the referrals you need, the good reviews you need online, it all starts a lot of times at the top in how you act and how you perform and the curiosity that you bring to your role. And again, common themes for you, Leslie, that I love are the curiosity and always be learning. And that ties directly into that listening and taking action.

Leslie Snavely: It’s interesting and I’ll add something just about this, I think it is also not just the good stuff. So you have to be able to communicate and listen on things that are hard because that’s what builds trust with people, right? I’m willing to take a hard question. I’m willing to say we did something wrong. And I think that is the foundation of once you listen and learn and shape that, you then, you just got to be real.

And I think, you know, as you think about long-term scaling, that ability to be real and be authentic in the way you do it is what makes it you as a leader able to sustain it, right? If you’re always kind of in a perfect mode, you cannot sustain it. It’s not real, and thus it doesn’t sustain the culture.

Leslie Vickrey: Right. Trust and transparency, we talk about that a lot. Lesly, LC, the other Lesly, knows very well. We’re big on internal communication and really big on leading with trust and transparency. And to me, that’s the only way you can lead. But it’s kind of surprising sometimes how many companies don’t take that much time and investment in doing so.

Lesly Cardec: Yeah. I think we’ve learned a lot about this topic, especially over the last few years too, because I’ve seen a lot of just communication paralysis. They just don’t know what to say or what to do. And so they don’t say anything and we all know in the absence of communication what happens. So I love that. That’s been your truth. It sounds like it’s kind of followed you throughout your career. I’d love to change course a little bit because it sounds like, you know, obviously the company has evolved so much, you, your career has evolved so much. I want to go back to, is there a decision risk or any sort of turning point that may have not have been obvious at the time, but because of that, ultimately changed the trajectory of where you are.

Leslie Snavely: Yeah, this is a great question. I’m glad you guys gave me a heads up on this question because I was able to think about it, I think, more effectively because there’s been many of these. But I was thinking back to my decision to come to CHG. And this was 16 years ago. And I was leaving a, on paper, like the perfect job. Right. So I was running marketing and product development and e-commerce for a mid-size beauty products company and it was a really good job. And honestly, the company and the people, really good people. But I was at a turning point in my life and I had just had my first, Catherine, so she is now a 16 year old and driving and was a newborn for the story. And I made, I was in my maternity leave kind of, I’ll call it fog, trying to figure out how I was going to go back to work. And I was thinking like very practically, you how am I going to go back on the road? How am I going to, my husband traveled for business? How am I going to have find childcare? How am I…and so I was in the mode of dissecting all the specifics of the decision. And you know, with time, because I had not a lot of time, but I had 12 weeks off, my diagnostic of the specific questions just felt really cumbersome and I wasn’t feeling good about the decision to go back.

And so it forced me through some good journaling and reflection to go up to the top. What is the real question behind the question? Is it really how am I going to find childcare? Is it really how I’m going to go back on the road? And what I got to by going through that exploration was it was actually it wasn’t what I wanted to do. So on a whim, I applied for a job at CHG Healthcare and very simply I wanted to live, I love the mountains. I wanted to live in Park City, Utah. And I needed a company headquartered in Salt Lake to do that.

I wanted a job that had high influence. It didn’t need to be some grand title or some, but a high influence job. And I wanted to have an impact field. So it was really centered on looking in healthcare. And so just, you what felt at the time like just me kind of unpacking my personal journey was such a pivotal decision for me. And ultimately I came to work at CHG and now fast forward 16 years later, I’m here running the company. But some things about that moment, I just remember vividly, you know when you’re in a decision and you’re just like grinding through it and you can’t seem to get, gosh, it’s like everything, every door you open feels like something isn’t answered or isn’t answered. And I just had some great counsel from mentors of mine at the time, like, Leslie, don’t think you’re really addressing the core issue. And the core issue was I wasn’t putting the life together that I wanted.

I was going and getting pragmatically after the little things I needed to go back to work, but I wasn’t thinking about the holistic part of me. And what would make me great at work was having the right pieces and parts around my whole life. And so that just was so impactful, that like stretch decision for me, which was to leave consumer packaged goods. I’d spent my entire career there to go into healthcare staffing. I didn’t even know what healthcare staffing was.

To move to Park City with my family, little family at the time, now have two kids here, to come out of a traveling lifestyle. I was in a very high travel job. All these things were really important, but also felt very high risk at the time to really, I’m like, am I throwing my career away? That’s what it felt like. And just the amount of…good advice I got at the time, but also just self-exploration I needed to do to make that decision was super impactful, obviously, on what’s now been a 16-year career.

Leslie Vickrey: What a huge life decision for you. The career, but to live the life that you wanted to live as a family unit and especially with a newborn to pick up and move across the country and all of the things. But you have to live the life that you love and love the life that you live. And you took that to heart, not only personally, but professionally too. And I think of Leslie just even that 16 year transformation, and one of the things I’d love to hear from you too is just that that transition. So you went from, you know, and so forth into healthcare staffing, which I love how well you are to say, I didn’t even know what that was. you know, transformation more broadly.

And sometimes that can look clean in hindsight. But rarely is it that way in the moment. But now fast forward to you, you know, all these years later, the CEO of the company, remarkable story of growth and transformation. Could you maybe share a recent challenge that just stretched you as a leader? So now you’ve completely changed the dynamic of where you are on your journey. You’re the CEO of a company. What did that teach you about you and yourself in the, in the process during that stretch?

Leslie Snavely: Yeah, great question. was thinking recently about, CHG is predominantly, as you mentioned, we’re physician and advanced practice workforce, both staffing partner to doctors and advanced practitioners, as well as workforce partner to health systems. But not too long ago, we were also a nurse staffing company. And in my first months as CEO, I had to announce the shutdown of our travel nurse staffing business, RN Network.

And first of all, the decision, second of all, the plan, third, then the execution, the people, that was incredibly difficult. And very practically, it was three weeks after I was announced as CEO, we announced the shutdown of the business. So all of that, not what you want to do as your first thing, right? I mean, that is not anyone’s choice.

It had been a decision in the making, so I had been a part of it running the company of RN network. I had a part of thinking through what our options were strategically, coming up with the decision as our executive team, but then to have to stand up in front of the group of people, 200 plus employees, and tell them we’re shutting down the business that they run and love was very, very difficult. So I think, you what did I learn? If you go back that, getting through that, I learned about empathy and courage wrapped in one. And sometimes we as leaders, I think this is particularly true as female leaders, we can be empathetic or have courage, but to wrap them together in one can be hard to do. And through the process of the decision, making the decision with my team, having to talk through it with the employees, follow up and do the execution, try to do the best thing. We ended up needing to lay off about 100 people. That’s very, very hard to do. We were able to maintain about 100 people in our company and give them new opportunities, but these are very challenging. So the learning of how to really thread the needle between strong business decision-making, courageous risk-taking, empathy, listening, taking in the good and the bad and trying to learn from it. That was all very, very recent, right? It was 18 months ago and right literally a month into my job. So I think that was something that I’ve carried, even in the last 18 months, I’ve faced into hard things knowing I can do hard things, our company can do hard things and business isn’t easy, right? And so that really helped me to kind of face into new challenges that I faced by the day.

Lesly Cardec: I would venture to say the empathy and the courage you’ve had the entire time actually from this entire conversation. This has been so much fun. I feel like we could have stayed on for another probably an hour.

Leslie Snavely: I know. The Leslies have a lot to talk about.

Lesly Cardec: Which just means we’ll have you on another time at some point. But where, I guess, before we wrap up, Leslie, where can listeners connect with you or follow you?

Leslie Snavely: I’m always on LinkedIn. My team makes fun that I use LinkedIn like other people use Instagram or something like that. So you can always find me there. Also, I am available at my email at CHG Healthcare. I try to make myself available. That’s part one of the things about me. So LinkedIn is where you start. Usually, you can always find me at the company, often in our headquarters building, hanging out with our people.

Lesly Cardec: Well, thank you so much. This has been so fun. And Les, anything else from your end?

Leslie Snavely: No, thank you ladies. Oh, wrong Leslie.

Leslie Vickrey: We made it through the whole without confusing even ourselves. Leslie, thank you so much for joining us. lead with such heart and you’re such a humble leader and you can make the difficult decisions while leading with something I talk about a lot, which is radical candor and comes from the heart. You’re fantastic. Thank you for being here.

Leslie Snavely: Thank you, Leslie.

Lesly Cardec: That was amazing.

Leslie Vickrey: The three Leslies, together at once.

Lesly Cardec: And I think we only got messed up one time with our name. I know. Yeah. It was so incredible. I don’t know that I’ve actually had a conversation. I think maybe in passing you said hello, but I’ve heard such good things about her from you and from others. And she definitely stacks up to what everyone has shared. So it was great.

Leslie Vickrey: She does, she lives up to it. My only disappointment is that we didn’t get through all of the questions that we had kind of earmarked for her. So, Leslie, when you listen to this… we just need to have you back.

So with that, we’ve got the other Leslie and now we have our take three, Lesly. So this is the parts of the conversation that we’ll be thinking about when the mics are off and we had more than three. So we had to rank prioritize what our top three was. And for me, one of the top things and you know, I had Leslie on our, The Edge podcast a while back and I remember this shining through then and it continues to do now, which the importance of listening and learning. So learning and listening. And she said something interesting to me that 20% of her time is spent listening and communicating back. So when I think of kind of internal communications and culture building, or even the time she spends talking and listening to customers, I’m so curious in her approach for doing it.

One of the reasons is you obviously you build trust with your teams. It allows you to be really transparent and it opens the door for people to share not only the good feedback but constructive feedback as well. So you can make some of those, takes it all in, takes it to heart. And then, you you can’t guarantee we’re gonna make all of these changes that we hear and that you share with us.

But for those that she does, she then communicates back out, which is really key for people listening to think about. It’s one thing to take in sentiment surveys. It’s one thing to spend as much time as she does. 20% of her time which is a lot. It’s important. And she knows it’s important. They grew from a thousand to 4,000 employees over her time there. Taking action is building trust. And I loved that about her. So she takes the time to learn, listen, and take action to build that trust.

Lesly Cardec: Yeah, I love that too. And I love how just she put a number to it, right? Because you you always wonder how much time you should be spending on it. And I know I’ve been part of organizations before that are great at listening, but that follow through really wasn’t there all the time. so I mean, that that immediately builds that trust with your with your team and something we talk about a lot for ClearEdge too. So I really liked her, her methodology around that. It sounds like it’s been ingrained in her since the very beginning. So that was great to hear. From my perspective, I loved talking about her journey from being a product marketer to being in sales and being in finance and then becoming CEO. That to me was so powerful because it doesn’t happen all the time. And it just is like, this is possible. This is possible, you guys. But it doesn’t happen, and she made it clear, without really knowing the business. And so when I think about that, it seems like a no brainer now, but I don’t know, when I started in marketing, that really wasn’t a topic that was talked about at all. It was, you know, marketing, sounds so probably sad at this point, but I know there’s probably organizations out there that marketing makes things look this way and you do the PowerPoint and you do this and it’s…

It’s so much more a strategic driver now. And if you think about it, you can’t drive growth if you don’t know what drives revenue. So it’s so important to understand that. And I just think she hit the nail on the head that she’s always kind of leaned in that direction. And I think her time spent throughout different departments really helped solidify that. I made a joke, but it really wasn’t a joke. You know marketing, know, you’re not over not math people, but we should be we should be people right and so I’m reflecting on my time you know in school and then the university and and it just really wasn’t part of the course and I know you learn a lot of that first-hand, but I really wish it was because it is a huge part of what we do.

Leslie Vickrey: Yeah. I mean, she made a comment about to fundamentally connect work to a business result. And that’s in any function that you’re in. You have to understand the business. I talked to a lot of marketers who have never been in a sales position and staffing. They’ve never recruited. They don’t understand the tools and technologies. you ask, do you know how sales reps make commission? Do you know how they come up with their goals? Do you know how that ties back into the business or how the business even simply makes money? And a lot of times the answer is no, they don’t. So my first piece of advice for anyone in marketing is always get to know the business. But to your point, the fact that she was able to take on each of the different roles and functions within it. When we grew up in marketing, marketing kind of you hit your the top when you became a CMO or that top role in marketing.

Now all of the C-suite can move around. You’ve got chief revenue officers, you’ve got depending on the company and the industry and the focus, if it’s a product based company, whatever it may be, you can definitely learn and take more of that on, but you’ve got to be curious. You have to know your customers and so forth.

All right, number three, the third piece for me that really stood out is when she talked about having her firstborn, who’s now, I believe she said 16, and making a decision to change. And someone had said, you know, she was coming back from leave and really trying to figure out what it was that she wanted to do. And fundamentally, the question she asked herself is, Am I living the life I want to live? And the answer was no.

So for her, was to pick up and move across the country and she wanted to be in the mountains. So, you know, it was completely moving her family across the country, leaving consumer goods industry and going into, in her case, CHG healthcare staffing, she knew nothing about. It wasn’t only the risk of moving across country, it was changing your career at the same. And, you know, I have the saying and talk about building the life you want. And you have to, I believe, for me personally, this was important, to love where you live, where you love.

You know, DeLibra had helped us put together, DeLibra Wesley, she had helped us with vision boarding. And on my vision board before we moved to Breckenridge, had, love where you live, where you love. And it makes such a difference for me to be in the mountains. And, you know, I did an hour mountain bike this morning and that sets me, it grounds me, it makes me happy. And my dogs being out in wilderness with them, that’s everything for me. It’s so grounding. So I really appreciate the fact that she completely uprooted her life and changed it. You know, left her parents, all the things to live the life that was important to her and to love the life that she lives and my goodness what a life she’s created and career and all of the things.

I know she said to follow her on LinkedIn. I’d also follow her on Instagram and see when she talks about the communicating and learning and listening. She posts all the time about the road shows she does for CHG and her company, how she gives to her community and what our kids are up to now that they are mountain kiddos. So I love it.

Lesly Cardec: I loved it so much. I mean, all that aside, she’s just so down to earth too. So yeah, very, very humble. So Leslie, if you’re listening, we’re coming back. We’re going to ask you for more time because we could have stayed on for a long, long time, but this was great. Thanks for spending time with us. And if there’s any recommendations for future guests, we’d love to hear them and keep this show going. Thank you so much. Until next time.

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